THE name of the public-house was the Pegasus's Arms. The
Pegasus's legs might have been more to the purpose; but, underneath the winged
horse upon the sign-board, the Pegasus's Arms was inscribed in Roman letters.
Beneath that inscription again, in a flowing scroll, the painter had touched off
the lines:
Good malt makes good beer, Walk in, and they'll draw it here; Good wine makes
good brandy, Give us a call, and you'll find it handy.
Framed and glazed upon the wall behind the dingy little bar, was another
Pegasus - a theatrical one - with real gauze let in for his wings, golden stars
stuck on all over him, and his ethereal harness made of red silk.
As it had grown too dusky without, to see the sign, and as it had not grown
light enough within to see the picture, Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby received
no offence from these idealities. They followed the girl up some steep
corner-stairs without meeting any one, and stopped in the dark while she went on
for a candle. They expected every moment to hear Merrylegs give tongue, but the
highly trained performing dog had not barked when the girl and the candle
appeared together.
'Father is not in our room, sir,' she said, with a face of great surprise.
'If you wouldn't mind walking in, I'll find him directly.' They walked in; and
Sissy, having set two chairs for them, sped away with a quick light step. It was
a mean, shabbily furnished room, with a bed in it. The white night-cap,
embellished with two peacock's feathers and a pigtail bolt upright, in which
Signor Jupe had that very afternoon enlivened the varied performances with his
chaste Shaksperean quips and retorts, hung upon a nail; but no other portion of
his wardrobe, or other token of himself or his pursuits, was to be seen
anywhere. As to Merrylegs, that respectable ancestor of the highly trained
animal who went aboard the ark, might have been accidentally shut out of it, for
any sign of a dog that was manifest to eye or ear in the Pegasus's Arms.
They heard the doors of rooms above, opening and shutting as Sissy went from
one to another in quest of her father; and presently they heard voices
expressing surprise. She came bounding down again in a great hurry, opened a
battered and mangy old hair trunk, found it empty, and looked round with her
hands clasped and her face full of terror.
'Father must have gone down to the Booth, sir. I don't know why he should go
there, but he must be there; I'll bring him in a minute!' She was gone directly,
without her bonnet; with her long, dark, childish hair streaming behind her.
'What does she mean!' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'Back in a minute? It's more than a
mile off.'
Before Mr. Bounderby could reply, a young man appeared at the door, and
introducing himself with the words, 'By your leaves, gentlemen!' walked in with
his hands in his pockets. His face, close-shaven, thin, and sallow, was shaded
by a great quantity of dark hair, brushed into a roll all round his head, and
parted up the centre. His legs were very robust, but shorter than legs of good
proportions should have been. His chest and back were as much too broad, as his
legs were too short. He was dressed in a Newmarket coat and tight-fitting
trousers; wore a shawl round his neck; smelt of lamp-oil, straw, orange-peel,
horses' provender, and sawdust; and looked a most remarkable sort of Centaur,
compounded of the stable and the play-house. Where the one began, and the other
ended, nobody could have told with any precision. This gentleman was mentioned
in the bills of the day as Mr. E. W. B. Childers, so justly celebrated for his
daring vaulting act as the Wild Huntsman of the North American Prairies; in
which popular performance, a diminutive boy with an old face, who now
accompanied him, assisted as his infant son: being carried upside down over his
father's shoulder, by one foot, and held by the crown of his head, heels
upwards, in the palm of his father's hand, according to the violent paternal
manner in which wild huntsmen may be observed to fondle their offspring. Made up
with curls, wreaths, wings, white bismuth, and carmine, this hopeful young
person soared into so pleasing a Cupid as to constitute the chief delight of the
maternal part of the spectators; but in private, where his characteristics were
a precocious cutaway coat and an extremely gruff voice, he became of the Turf,
turfy.
'By your leaves, gentlemen,' said Mr. E. W. B. Childers, glancing round the
room. 'It was you, I believe, that were wishing to see Jupe!'
'It was,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'His daughter has gone to fetch him, but I
can't wait; therefore, if you please, I will leave a message for him with you.'
'You see, my friend,' Mr. Bounderby put in, 'we are the kind of people who
know the value of time, and you are the kind of people who don't know the value
of time.'
'I have not,' retorted Mr. Childers, after surveying him from head to foot,
'the honour of knowing you, - but if you mean that you can make more money of
your time than I can of mine, I should judge from your appearance, that you are
about right.'
'And when you have made it, you can keep it too, I should think,' said Cupid.
'Kidderminster, stow that!' said Mr. Childers. (Master Kidderminster was
Cupid's mortal name.)
'What does he come here cheeking us for, then?' cried Master Kidderminster,
showing a very irascible temperament. 'If you want to cheek us, pay your ochre
at the doors and take it out.'
'Kidderminster,' said Mr. Childers, raising his voice, 'stow that! - Sir,' to
Mr. Gradgrind, 'I was addressing myself to you. You may or you may not be aware
(for perhaps you have not been much in the audience), that Jupe has missed his
tip very often, lately.'
'Has - what has he missed?' asked Mr. Gradgrind, glancing at the potent
Bounderby for assistance.
'Missed his tip.'
'Offered at the Garters four times last night, and never done 'em once,' said
Master Kidderminster. 'Missed his tip at the banners, too, and was loose in his
ponging.'
'Didn't do what he ought to do. Was short in his leaps and bad in his
tumbling,' Mr. Childers interpreted.
'Oh!' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'that is tip, is it?'
'In a general way that's missing his tip,' Mr. E. W. B. Childers answered.
'Nine oils, Merrylegs, missing tips, garters, banners, and Ponging, eh!'
ejaculated Bounderby, with his laugh of laughs. 'Queer sort of company, too, for
a man who has raised himself!'
'Lower yourself, then,' retorted Cupid. 'Oh Lord! if you've raised yourself
so high as all that comes to, let yourself down a bit.'
'This is a very obtrusive lad!' said Mr. Gradgrind, turning, and knitting his
brows on him.
'We'd have had a young gentleman to meet you, if we had known you were
coming,' retorted Master Kidderminster, nothing abashed. 'It's a pity you don't
have a bespeak, being so particular. You're on the Tight-Jeff, ain't you?'
'What does this unmannerly boy mean,' asked Mr. Gradgrind, eyeing him in a
sort of desperation, 'by Tight-Jeff?'
'There! Get out, get out!' said Mr. Childers, thrusting his young friend from
the room, rather in the prairie manner. 'Tight-Jeff or Slack-Jeff, it don't much
signify: it's only tight-rope and slack- rope. You were going to give me a
message for Jupe?'
'Yes, I was.'
'Then,' continued Mr. Childers, quickly, 'my opinion is, he will never
receive it. Do you know much of him?'
'I never saw the man in my life.'
'I doubt if you ever will see him now. It's pretty plain to me, he's off.'
'Do you mean that he has deserted his daughter?'
'Ay! I mean,' said Mr. Childers, with a nod, 'that he has cut. He was goosed
last night, he was goosed the night before last, he was goosed to-day. He has
lately got in the way of being always goosed, and he can't stand it.'
'Why has he been - so very much - Goosed?' asked Mr. Gradgrind, forcing the
word out of himself, with great solemnity and reluctance.
'His joints are turning stiff, and he is getting used up,' said Childers. 'He
has his points as a Cackler still, but he can't get a living out of them.'
'A Cackler!' Bounderby repeated. 'Here we go again!'
'A speaker, if the gentleman likes it better,' said Mr. E. W. B. Childers,
superciliously throwing the interpretation over his shoulder, and accompanying
it with a shake of his long hair - which all shook at once. 'Now, it's a
remarkable fact, sir, that it cut that man deeper, to know that his daughter
knew of his being goosed, than to go through with it.'
'Good!' interrupted Mr. Bounderby. 'This is good, Gradgrind! A man so fond of
his daughter, that he runs away from her! This is devilish good! Ha! ha! Now,
I'll tell you what, young man. I haven't always occupied my present station of
life. I know what these things are. You may be astonished to hear it, but my
mother - ran away from me.'
E. W. B. Childers replied pointedly, that he was not at all astonished to
hear it.
'Very well,' said Bounderby. 'I was born in a ditch, and my mother ran away
from me. Do I excuse her for it? No. Have I ever excused her for it? Not I. What
do I call her for it? I call her probably the very worst woman that ever lived
in the world, except my drunken grandmother. There's no family pride about me,
there's no imaginative sentimental humbug about me. I call a spade a spade; and
I call the mother of Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, without any fear or any
favour, what I should call her if she had been the mother of Dick Jones of
Wapping. So, with this man. He is a runaway rogue and a vagabond, that's what he
is, in English.'
'It's all the same to me what he is or what he is not, whether in English or
whether in French,' retorted Mr. E. W. B. Childers, facing about. 'I am telling
your friend what's the fact; if you don't like to hear it, you can avail
yourself of the open air. You give it mouth enough, you do; but give it mouth in
your own building at least,' remonstrated E. W. B. with stern irony. 'Don't give
it mouth in this building, till you're called upon. You have got some building
of your own I dare say, now?'
'Perhaps so,' replied Mr. Bounderby, rattling his money and laughing.
'Then give it mouth in your own building, will you, if you please?' said
Childers. 'Because this isn't a strong building, and too much of you might bring
it down!'
Eyeing Mr. Bounderby from head to foot again, he turned from him, as from a
man finally disposed of, to Mr. Gradgrind.
'Jupe sent his daughter out on an errand not an hour ago, and then was seen
to slip out himself, with his hat over his eyes, and a bundle tied up in a
handkerchief under his arm. She will never believe it of him, but he has cut
away and left her.'
'Pray,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'why will she never believe it of him?'
'Because those two were one. Because they were never asunder. Because, up to
this time, he seemed to dote upon her,' said Childers, taking a step or two to
look into the empty trunk. Both Mr. Childers and Master Kidderminster walked in
a curious manner; with their legs wider apart than the general run of men, and
with a very knowing assumption of being stiff in the knees. This walk was common
to all the male members of Sleary's company, and was understood to express, that
they were always on horseback.
'Poor Sissy! He had better have apprenticed her,' said Childers, giving his
hair another shake, as he looked up from the empty box. 'Now, he leaves her
without anything to take to.'
'It is creditable to you, who have never been apprenticed, to express that
opinion,' returned Mr. Gradgrind, approvingly.
'I never apprenticed? I was apprenticed when I was seven year old.'
'Oh! Indeed?' said Mr. Gradgrind, rather resentfully, as having been
defrauded of his good opinion. 'I was not aware of its being the custom to
apprentice young persons to - '
'Idleness,' Mr. Bounderby put in with a loud laugh. 'No, by the Lord Harry!
Nor I!'
'Her father always had it in his head,' resumed Childers, feigning
unconsciousness of Mr. Bounderby's existence, 'that she was to be taught the
deuce-and-all of education. How it got into his head, I can't say; I can only
say that it never got out. He has been picking up a bit of reading for her, here
- and a bit of writing for her, there - and a bit of ciphering for her,
somewhere else - these seven years.'
Mr. E. W. B. Childers took one of his hands out of his pockets, stroked his
face and chin, and looked, with a good deal of doubt and a little hope, at Mr.
Gradgrind. From the first he had sought to conciliate that gentleman, for the
sake of the deserted girl.
'When Sissy got into the school here,' he pursued, 'her father was as pleased
as Punch. I couldn't altogether make out why, myself, as we were not stationary
here, being but comers and goers anywhere. I suppose, however, he had this move
in his mind - he was always half-cracked - and then considered her provided for.
If you should happen to have looked in to-night, for the purpose of telling him
that you were going to do her any little service,' said Mr. Childers, stroking
his face again, and repeating his look, 'it would be very fortunate and
well-timed; very fortunate and well- timed.'
'On the contrary,' returned Mr. Gradgrind. 'I came to tell him that her
connections made her not an object for the school, and that she must not attend
any more. Still, if her father really has left her, without any connivance on
her part - Bounderby, let me have a word with you.'
Upon this, Mr. Childers politely betook himself, with his equestrian walk, to
the landing outside the door, and there stood stroking his face, and softly
whistling. While thus engaged, he overheard such phrases in Mr. Bounderby's
voice as 'No. I say no. I advise you not. I say by no means.' While, from Mr.
Gradgrind, he heard in his much lower tone the words, 'But even as an example to
Louisa, of what this pursuit which has been the subject of a vulgar curiosity,
leads to and ends in. Think of it, Bounderby, in that point of view.'
Meanwhile, the various members of Sleary's company gradually gathered
together from the upper regions, where they were quartered, and, from standing
about, talking in low voices to one another and to Mr. Childers, gradually
insinuated themselves and him into the room. There were two or three handsome
young women among them, with their two or three husbands, and their two or three
mothers, and their eight or nine little children, who did the fairy business
when required. The father of one of the families was in the habit of balancing
the father of another of the families on the top of a great pole; the father of
a third family often made a pyramid of both those fathers, with Master
Kidderminster for the apex, and himself for the base; all the fathers could
dance upon rolling casks, stand upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl
hand-basins, ride upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at nothing. All
the mothers could (and did) dance, upon the slack wire and the tight-rope, and
perform rapid acts on bare-backed steeds; none of them were at all particular in
respect of showing their legs; and one of them, alone in a Greek chariot, drove
six in hand into every town they came to. They all assumed to be mighty rakish
and knowing, they were not very tidy in their private dresses, they were not at
all orderly in their domestic arrangements, and the combined literature of the
whole company would have produced but a poor letter on any subject. Yet there
was a remarkable gentleness and childishness about these people, a special
inaptitude for any kind of sharp practice, and an untiring readiness to help and
pity one another, deserving often of as much respect, and always of as much
generous construction, as the every- day virtues of any class of people in the
world.
Last of all appeared Mr. Sleary: a stout man as already mentioned, with one
fixed eye, and one loose eye, a voice (if it can be called so) like the efforts
of a broken old pair of bellows, a flabby surface, and a muddled head which was
never sober and never drunk.
'Thquire!' said Mr. Sleary, who was troubled with asthma, and whose breath
came far too thick and heavy for the letter s, 'Your thervant! Thith ith a bad
piethe of bithnith, thith ith. You've heard of my Clown and hith dog being
thuppothed to have morrithed?'
He addressed Mr. Gradgrind, who answered 'Yes.'
'Well, Thquire,' he returned, taking off his hat, and rubbing the lining with
his pocket-handkerchief, which he kept inside for the purpose. 'Ith it your
intenthion to do anything for the poor girl, Thquire?'
'I shall have something to propose to her when she comes back,' said Mr.
Gradgrind.
'Glad to hear it, Thquire. Not that I want to get rid of the child, any more
than I want to thtand in her way. I'm willing to take her prentith, though at
her age ith late. My voithe ith a little huthky, Thquire, and not eathy heard by
them ath don't know me; but if you'd been chilled and heated, heated and
chilled, chilled and heated in the ring when you wath young, ath often ath I
have been, your voithe wouldn't have lathted out, Thquire, no more than mine.'
'I dare say not,' said Mr. Gradgrind.
'What thall it be, Thquire, while you wait? Thall it be Therry? Give it a
name, Thquire!' said Mr. Sleary, with hospitable ease.
'Nothing for me, I thank you,' said Mr. Gradgrind.
'Don't thay nothing, Thquire. What doth your friend thay? If you haven't took
your feed yet, have a glath of bitterth.'
Here his daughter Josephine - a pretty fair-haired girl of eighteen, who had
been tied on a horse at two years old, and had made a will at twelve, which she
always carried about with her, expressive of her dying desire to be drawn to the
grave by the two piebald ponies - cried, 'Father, hush! she has come back!' Then
came Sissy Jupe, running into the room as she had run out of it. And when she
saw them all assembled, and saw their looks, and saw no father there, she broke
into a most deplorable cry, and took refuge on the bosom of the most
accomplished tight-rope lady (herself in the family-way), who knelt down on the
floor to nurse her, and to weep over her.
'Ith an internal thame, upon my thoul it ith,' said Sleary.
'O my dear father, my good kind father, where are you gone? You are gone to
try to do me some good, I know! You are gone away for my sake, I am sure! And
how miserable and helpless you will be without me, poor, poor father, until you
come back!' It was so pathetic to hear her saying many things of this kind, with
her face turned upward, and her arms stretched out as if she were trying to stop
his departing shadow and embrace it, that no one spoke a word until Mr.
Bounderby (growing impatient) took the case in hand.
'Now, good people all,' said he, 'this is wanton waste of time. Let the girl
understand the fact. Let her take it from me, if you like, who have been run
away from, myself. Here, what's your name! Your father has absconded - deserted
you - and you mustn't expect to see him again as long as you live.'
They cared so little for plain Fact, these people, and were in that advanced
state of degeneracy on the subject, that instead of being impressed by the
speaker's strong common sense, they took it in extraordinary dudgeon. The men
muttered 'Shame!' and the women 'Brute!' and Sleary, in some haste, communicated
the following hint, apart to Mr. Bounderby.
'I tell you what, Thquire. To thpeak plain to you, my opinion ith that you
had better cut it thort, and drop it. They're a very good natur'd people, my
people, but they're accuthtomed to be quick in their movementh; and if you don't
act upon my advithe, I'm damned if I don't believe they'll pith you out o'
winder.'
Mr. Bounderby being restrained by this mild suggestion, Mr. Gradgrind found
an opening for his eminently practical exposition of the subject.
'It is of no moment,' said he, 'whether this person is to be expected back at
any time, or the contrary. He is gone away, and there is no present expectation
of his return. That, I believe, is agreed on all hands.'
'Thath agreed, Thquire. Thick to that!' From Sleary.
'Well then. I, who came here to inform the father of the poor girl, Jupe,
that she could not be received at the school any more, in consequence of there
being practical objections, into which I need not enter, to the reception there
of the children of persons so employed, am prepared in these altered
circumstances to make a proposal. I am willing to take charge of you, Jupe, and
to educate you, and provide for you. The only condition (over and above your
good behaviour) I make is, that you decide now, at once, whether to accompany me
or remain here. Also, that if you accompany me now, it is understood that you
communicate no more with any of your friends who are here present. These
observations comprise the whole of the case.'
'At the thame time,' said Sleary, 'I mutht put in my word, Thquire, tho that
both thides of the banner may be equally theen. If you like, Thethilia, to be
prentitht, you know the natur of the work and you know your companionth. Emma
Gordon, in whothe lap you're a lying at prethent, would be a mother to you, and
Joth'phine would be a thithter to you. I don't pretend to be of the angel breed
myself, and I don't thay but what, when you mith'd your tip, you'd find me cut
up rough, and thwear an oath or two at you. But what I thay, Thquire, ith, that
good tempered or bad tempered, I never did a horthe a injury yet, no more than
thwearing at him went, and that I don't expect I thall begin otherwithe at my
time of life, with a rider. I never wath much of a Cackler, Thquire, and I have
thed my thay.'
The latter part of this speech was addressed to Mr. Gradgrind, who received
it with a grave inclination of his head, and then remarked:
'The only observation I will make to you, Jupe, in the way of influencing
your decision, is, that it is highly desirable to have a sound practical
education, and that even your father himself (from what I understand) appears,
on your behalf, to have known and felt that much.'
The last words had a visible effect upon her. She stopped in her wild crying,
a little detached herself from Emma Gordon, and turned her face full upon her
patron. The whole company perceived the force of the change, and drew a long
breath together, that plainly said, 'she will go!'
'Be sure you know your own mind, Jupe,' Mr. Gradgrind cautioned her; 'I say
no more. Be sure you know your own mind!'
'When father comes back,' cried the girl, bursting into tears again after a
minute's silence, 'how will he ever find me if I go away!'
'You may be quite at ease,' said Mr. Gradgrind, calmly; he worked out the
whole matter like a sum: 'you may be quite at ease, Jupe, on that score. In such
a case, your father, I apprehend, must find out Mr. - '
'Thleary. Thath my name, Thquire. Not athamed of it. Known all over England,
and alwayth paythe ith way.'
'Must find out Mr. Sleary, who would then let him know where you went. I
should have no power of keeping you against his wish, and he would have no
difficulty, at any time, in finding Mr. Thomas Gradgrind of Coketown. I am well
known.'
'Well known,' assented Mr. Sleary, rolling his loose eye. 'You're one of the
thort, Thquire, that keepth a prethiouth thight of money out of the houthe. But
never mind that at prethent.'
There was another silence; and then she exclaimed, sobbing with her hands
before her face, 'Oh, give me my clothes, give me my clothes, and let me go away
before I break my heart!'
The women sadly bestirred themselves to get the clothes together - it was
soon done, for they were not many - and to pack them in a basket which had often
travelled with them. Sissy sat all the time upon the ground, still sobbing, and
covering her eyes. Mr. Gradgrind and his friend Bounderby stood near the door,
ready to take her away. Mr. Sleary stood in the middle of the room, with the
male members of the company about him, exactly as he would have stood in the
centre of the ring during his daughter Josephine's performance. He wanted
nothing but his whip.
The basket packed in silence, they brought her bonnet to her, and smoothed
her disordered hair, and put it on. Then they pressed about her, and bent over
her in very natural attitudes, kissing and embracing her: and brought the
children to take leave of her; and were a tender-hearted, simple, foolish set of
women altogether.
'Now, Jupe,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'If you are quite determined, come!'
But she had to take her farewell of the male part of the company yet, and
every one of them had to unfold his arms (for they all assumed the professional
attitude when they found themselves near Sleary), and give her a parting kiss -
Master Kidderminster excepted, in whose young nature there was an original
flavour of the misanthrope, who was also known to have harboured matrimonial
views, and who moodily withdrew. Mr. Sleary was reserved until the last. Opening
his arms wide he took her by both her hands, and would have sprung her up and
down, after the riding-master manner of congratulating young ladies on their
dismounting from a rapid act; but there was no rebound in Sissy, and she only
stood before him crying.
'Good-bye, my dear!' said Sleary. 'You'll make your fortun, I hope, and none
of our poor folkth will ever trouble you, I'll pound it. I with your father
hadn't taken hith dog with him; ith a ill- conwenienth to have the dog out of
the billth. But on thecond thoughth, he wouldn't have performed without hith
mathter, tho ith ath broad ath ith long!'
With that he regarded her attentively with his fixed eye, surveyed his
company with his loose one, kissed her, shook his head, and handed her to Mr.
Gradgrind as to a horse.
'There the ith, Thquire,' he said, sweeping her with a professional glance as
if she were being adjusted in her seat, 'and the'll do you juthtithe. Good-bye,
Thethilia!'
'Good-bye, Cecilia!' 'Good-bye, Sissy!' 'God bless you, dear!' In a variety
of voices from all the room.
But the riding-master eye had observed the bottle of the nine oils in her
bosom, and he now interposed with 'Leave the bottle, my dear; ith large to
carry; it will be of no uthe to you now. Give it to me!'
'No, no!' she said, in another burst of tears. 'Oh, no! Pray let me keep it
for father till he comes back! He will want it when he comes back. He had never
thought of going away, when he sent me for it. I must keep it for him, if you
please!'
'Tho be it, my dear. (You thee how it ith, Thquire!) Farewell, Thethilia! My
latht wordth to you ith thith, Thtick to the termth of your engagement, be
obedient to the Thquire, and forget uth. But if, when you're grown up and
married and well off, you come upon any horthe-riding ever, don't be hard upon
it, don't be croth with it, give it a Bethpeak if you can, and think you might
do wurth. People mutht be amuthed, Thquire, thomehow,' continued Sleary,
rendered more pursy than ever, by so much talking; 'they can't be alwayth a
working, nor yet they can't be alwayth a learning. Make the betht of uth; not
the wurtht. I've got my living out of the horthe-riding all my life, I know; but
I conthider that I lay down the philothophy of the thubject when I
thay to you, Thquire, make the betht of uth: not the wurtht!'
The Sleary philosophy was propounded as they went downstairs and the fixed
eye of Philosophy - and its rolling eye, too - soon lost the three figures and
the basket in the darkness of the street.
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